A Glass, a Drink, and a Drinker
by i85
Summary: Ford Prefect, being an editor for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, gets himself wasted on a number of different planets... and earns a living with it.
1. Butterflies and helicopters

There was a silence. There was the sound of a fist moving through the air with the single goal to touch the cheek of the person it was going to hit.

The fist hit the cheek, feeling rather smug with itself. The human to which the fist was attached was feeling rather smug as well. The person who was hit by the fist was not.

In contrary to what you might expect, this story is not about the owner of the fist. Neither is it about the person that was hit. Neither is it about the people in the bar who saw it happening. Neither is it about the bartender who was laughing. Neither is it about the mice scurrying around in dark corners doing unspeakable things to themselves. Neither is it about Barack Obama.

This story is about the man who was walking past the bar. The bar itself is completely irrelevant to the story, as is the fight inside of it. The man did not even notice the bar, or the fight. Barack Obama was unknown to this man.

There was a point to writing this, and the following chapters, down, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind.

This man was Ford Prefect. Ford Prefect came from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, but this is not where he was now. He was, however, on another small planet. It wasn't in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, though. It was circling a star somewhere in an unfashionable west arm of the galaxy.

The planet was called Earth.

The above is not true. Ford Prefect was on a wholly different planet, seven-hundred million light years from, coincidentally, both Betelgeuse and Earth. Considering this is impossible as a whole, we shall simply shrug and let it pass.

The planet was called Proprol. It was mostly inhabited by an intelligent race of donkeys, but since it had become a popular place to have a break from traveling interstellar distances with commercial spacecrafts, the donkeys themselves did not make up the largest part of the total amount of species on the planet at any given time, except around lunchtime on a certain Thursday.

What Ford was doing there was exactly what most of the other beings do on that planet when they do not live there; having a break from traveling interstellar differences with commercial spacecrafts. At this precise moment, Ford was looking for a bar where he could have a drink. He just passed a bar-

The point to writing the introduction has just sneaked back into the chronicler's mind.

He just passed a bar where he could have a perfectly fine drink and be entertained by some bar fights, but he did not notice as he was distracted by a car crash across the road. This car crash involved a helicopter and a butterfly, but explaining the reason why the butterfly was involved takes up too much time and space. The helicopter was involved because it had shot one of the cars in the car crash, causing it to fly off the road and into a parked car.

As this does not make a lot of sense, here is the reason why the butterfly was involved. The helicopter, or to be more specific, the pilot, had shot at the car because a butterfly had flown into the windshield of the helicopter, and common superstitious belief around these parts involve killing a sentient being after killing a butterfly. This is because of a very long and complicated poem that became know as the Bible- a mere coincidence, comparable to the coincidence between Ford's name and a certain driving vehicle on a planet know as Earth. To continue- the Bible praises the butterflies as holy creatures and related to all other living beings, reasoning that if a butterfly dies, another living being should die as well, because the two are related in one way or another.

This is, as of yet, an inadequately researched and scientifically unsupported theory.

It still does not make a lot of sense.

Ford, being ignorant of all of this, decided to ignore the car crash and resume trying to find a bar to get something to drink, preferably a Pangalactic Gargle Blaster. Luckily for him, he came across a bar that served Pangalactic Gargle Blasters two blocks further down the street and proceeded to get himself completely wasted.


	2. Accepted creditcards

"What do you mean," Ford Prefect said with an unsteady gaze, "you accept it?"

The bartender held up the piece of plastic, with the words 'Mastercard' printed on it. "This creditcard," he said, "we accept it. It is a valid way to pay, sir. Is there a problem with that?"

Ford had to sit down.

He sat down.

His mouth said foolish things.

"You have heard of the Earth?" Ford said, eventually, flabbergasted. With eyes full of disbelief (and unsteadiness), he looked at the bartender. The bartender shrugged. "No, not personally. All I know is that you can pay with this, sir, although you're the first to ever actually pay with it here."

Ford got up, failed, stumbled, and sat down again. "Fine, OK. Yes, awesome, zappy, froody." The bartender, convinced Ford was not in the right frame of mind (if any) to do his part of the transaction, did it himself.

Proprol is a very congenial spot to be, Ford decided, but not for long. He stumbled out of the bar and looked down the street. To his mild surprise, there were definately two streets, intertwined and identical to eachother. After some hard thinking, he decided he liked the left one best, realised there were two streets because he was drunk and sat down on the trottoir, his head between his knees. After a few minutes had passed, he felt a bit better and looked up to see how the streets were doing; they had reduced to one-and-a-half, which was definately an improvement. Considering his experience with being drunk, Ford knew he was steady enough to go back to his hotel, which is what he did.

Upon arriving at said hotel, which had taken him slightly longer than he had expected- when he had left the bar, it had been somewhere in the afternoon; now, it was around midnight-, he had some trouble climbing up the cumbersome stairs leading to his room, but he managed to make it halfway up before falling asleep, much impressed with himself.


End file.
